This unpleasant little movie is partly redeemed by the beautiful Sandrine Bonnaire, but not by her character. What we have here is a story about a voyeur who regularly spies on a young woman across the street (Bonnaire). The young woman lives her life behind a generously sized window in full view of the voyeur (Michel Blanc). She never bothers to pull down a shade. She dresses and undresses in full view. She entertains her lover in full view (though they seem to have sex in another room. The voyeur improbably falls in love with her and she improbably contacts him soon after she discovers in a lightning storm that she's being watched by a man in the apartment building across the street. He's a completely unsympathetic character. I did not feel the slightest impulse to feel sorry for him. The behavior of the young woman is, in my mind, incomprehensible. Although "explained" at the very end by an unexpected plot twist which I will refrain from describing, her behavior apparently depends on her belief that he knows things about her and her lover that simply could not be divined through a curtain-less window. Movie-goers are accustomed to plots that are overly dependent on coincidence, and perhaps there are viewers who willingly suspend disbelief in films that rely on motives that are beyond flimsy. I can live with the former (for example, in movies based on the writings of Charles Dickens, which are packed with coincidence), but I have no tolerance for films that rely on plot elements that are totally unconvincing A romance between the all-knowing and unattractive voyeur and the much younger, beautiful, spied-upon victim? C'mon.
Review of Monsieur Hire
